This application claims the priority of Korean Patent Application No. 2002-81386, filed on Dec. 18, 2002, in the Korean Intellectual Property Office, which is incorporated herein in its entirety by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multi-functional switch fabric apparatus and a control method for the same to provide services using hardware regardless of the technical fields and network requirements to which the apparatus is applied, and more particularly, to a multi-functional switch fabric apparatus and a control method for the same to support services provided to a network, which has various and contradictory requirements, using hardware. The various and contradictory requirements include supporting a network in which various transfer methods are present, requiring a restricted redundancy to improve reliability, requiring discriminatory services according to service grade, and requiring to construct the network at a low cost.
2. Description of the Related Art
As communication technology improves, switch fabric apparatuses have been developed to support both Internet packet (IP) communication and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) communication that have different attributes, so requirements for the switch fabric apparatuses become varied. Since the IP based switch fabric apparatuses are generally applied to router systems, a low network construction cost is required. On the other hand, since the ATM based switch fabric apparatuses are generally applied to ATM switch systems, an improved reliability and discriminatory services are required.
However, since the requirements of the switch fabric apparatuses are contradictory, a conventional switch fabric apparatus cannot satisfy all of them at the same time. Furthermore, it is impossible for the conventional switch fabric apparatus to satisfy a transfer method other than the IP and ATM methods. Accordingly, an overlay network structure has been used to satisfy the requirements of the switch fabric apparatuses. However, since different systems are used in the overlay network structure, disadvantages such as difficult and expensive maintenance and repairing operations and low reliability of the systems occur.
The switch fabric apparatuses are used in a router system, an ATM switch system, a TDM system, and a PSTN switch. Since line interface cards and protocol engines of the switch fabric apparatuses are changed according to the switching method, the types and the application fields of the systems are determined based on the switch fabric apparatuses. In other words, the switch fabric hardware shapes are different according to the application fields, so the maintenance of the switch fabric apparatuses is difficult and reliability of the switch fabric apparatuses is lowered when interacting with the network.